


Little Thing

by Radio Rascal (Vagrants)



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Big Sibling Chara, Gen, Post-Soulless Pacifist Route, Threats of Dunking-On, Threats of Violence, dad!Sans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-05-24 17:52:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6161619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vagrants/pseuds/Radio%20Rascal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was only a matter of time before the monsters on the surface started having kids, and Chara ends up with their very own Little Thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Thing

**Author's Note:**

> so i've seen some comics around Tumblr of Chara living with Toriel and Sans (i don't know--i can't remember who they're by so idek who this AU belongs to if anyone I DON'T PAY ATTENTION I'M SORRY) and i assume it's a post-soulless thing where they've taken over Frisk's body, but i started thinking.
> 
> what if Toriel and Sans had a kid of their own?? big sibling Chara? worst or best sibling ever? who knows.
> 
> but i do know this: i have tons of adorable images in my head and i wanted this to have a happy and not-so-creepy ending despite Chara being...Chara
> 
> PS: extra little detail i couldn't fit into the story--when Chara took over Frisk's body the timeline was changed and they'd retroactively always been Chara. so nobody even knows who Frisk is in this timeline. but Sans is vaguely aware b/c of his sciencing around with the space-time continuum or w/e.

Chara was so very, very bored. Beside them, Papyrus was threatening to vibrate straight out of his chair. If he fell on the floor, it would have provided something marginally more entertaining to focus on that pure white walls and a single analog clock.

“HELLO, TINY ONE,” Papyrus said, sticking one hand out. “I AM THE GREAT UNCLE PAPYRUS!” He paused and grumbled to himself. “NO, NO…HELLO! TINY ONE!! I AM YOUR PAPYRUS, THE GREAT UNCLE! ...WAIT I MESSED IT UP.”

Chara folded one leg over the other and tried to focus harder on the empty hallway. It was hard with how loud the skeleton was.

They didn’t understand why they had to come. Mom had insisted, and part of them panged at the thought of upsetting her. Sans had wanted them to stay home (“No need to drag the kid out every time you gotta leave, right? It’s not like they’ll...eh-heh...burn the house down or anything.”) and making them wait outside the room was the compromise.

Sans hadn’t wanted to frighten his brother, so that’s why Papyrus was waiting with them.

“HELLO, TINY ONE! I AM THE GREAT PAPYRUS, THE COOLEST UNCLE AND BROTHER OF THE COOLEST DAD!”

“Papyrus,” Chara started, turning their gaze on him. He had his arm stuck out so far that a lone passing nurse had to swerve to get around him. “If that thing’s anywhere close to being born, it’s already heard you and your three dozen other attempts at perfecting your introduction.”

Papyrus looked distraught. “BUT! CHARA! FIRST IMPRESSIONS ARE EVERYTHING!”

“It’s not gonna  _ remember _ your first impression, my man.”

As if to save Chara from further torment, the double doors opened and a fire elemental nurse poked her head out to smile at the two. “Chara? Papyrus?”

“YES, THAT IS US!”

“Right this way.”

Papyrus squealed with excitement and  _ did _ vibrate straight off his chair. He practically skipped after the nurse. Chara followed more sedately, glancing around at the bare and sterile walls. They’d never been inside a hospital before, and the change of scenery was more interesting at the moment; it was just a baby right now so what was the big deal?

The nurse led them down a short hallway and turned left into the nearest room. Inside, Mom lay on the hospital bed cradling a bundle of blankets. Chara thought of Asriel. They smiled.

Oh, yeah, Sans was sitting at Mom’s bedside. He gave Chara a short look before turning his gaze on Papyrus, his own ever-present grin looking ever so slightly more sincere for his brother.

Papyrus cooed. When Chara glanced up, there were tears at the edges of his eye sockets.

“Would you like to hold him?” Mom asked. She looked, as Sans might have said, bone-tired.

“Oh, can I?” Amazingly, the skeleton wrangled in his volume. He walked closer. Mom handed the bundle to Sans, who passed it to the taller skeleton with the greatest care. “Ah...h-hello, tiny one,” he choked out. His back was to Chara, but they imagined he was fully crying at this point. “I...I...am so happy I could meet the world’s coolest nephew.”

He looked back worriedly at Chara. “Not that you are not cool, Chara. It’s, uh, a skeleton thing.”

“Nice save, bro.” Sans beamed. “But he’s pretty awesome, huh? Even you’ve gotta agree, Chara.”

They shrugged. Unlike everyone else, they spoke at a normal tone instead of that reverent whisper. “It’s just a baby right now. It can’t do anything.”

Sans’s glance was cold, but he said nothing further about it.

“I don’t know, Chara,” Papyrus said, giving them a halfway glance. “He has already felled the Great Papyrus.”

Chara stepped forward and looked up. They could barely peek over the tall skeleton’s arms and caught a glimpse of white through the blankets. In their peripheral vision they saw Mom smile and Sans lean forward.

They huffed and pulled away. “He’s...cute,” they said at last.

“You are an older sibling now,” Mom said. She sounded like she was drifting to sleep.

“What is his name?” Papyrus asked.

“We haven’t decided yet,” Sans answered. Mom’s eyes closed and her breathing deepened.

Chara already knew what they would call him. He was a little thing, so he would be Little Thing.

* * *

Torians Gothic. Sans said skeleton hyrbids usually had two names to reflect both customs and parents, but nobody knew where he got the tradition from. Skeletons were pretty rare to begin with. Chara kept calling him Little Thing but Mom and Sans named him Torians Gothic.

Everyone went home the same day. Mom took Little Thing towards the nursery, but Sans steered Chara to the living room sofa. They groaned internally. They knew it was coming.

“Look,” Sans started once they were both seated. “I’m not totally aware of what you’ve done, but I know you’ve done some awful stuff. So I’m gonna get straight to the point.” He glanced at them. “I don’t know if you’ve got it in you, but you were close to Toriel’s other kid, right? So just...be the kind of sibling Papyrus is.”

They quirked their mouth. “Loud and obnoxious?”

He ignored the slight and continued. “Supportive and fun and super cool and…” His orbitals darkened. “Not murderous.”

Chara looked at him. In the other room, Little Thing started crying and they flinched at the noise.

Sans sighed, got up and walked towards the noise. He wouldn’t know if his talk ever made it into Chara’s head. They didn’t even know what they felt; it was too soon after to tell.

* * *

It was  _ hell _ . Chara woke up every night to his infernal crying. Mom had to double her coffee intake to get through the day. Sans was awake more, and usually looked at least a little bit out of it. Mom took two weeks off, but after her time was up, she went back to teaching while Sans became a stay-at-home dad.

Chara avoided the Little Thing as much as possible. It was hard--Mom’s house wasn’t big, and Sans carried him everywhere. Torians clearly took after his skeleton side more, but he had fangs and the barest peach fuzz in places that might erupt into fur later on.

Papyrus came over more often. He turned out to be great with kids. If they ever needed a babysitter, he’d be the first pick.

A lot of other people stopped by over the days--Asgore, who gave gifts and congratulations and he cried too, god why were so many people crying over a dumb Little Thing; Undyne and Alphys, the former of which promised to “go easy on the lil guy when he starts his training!” while the latter presented a toy robot that was supposed to be educational for growing minds; and  _ every single dog _ Sans knew from Snowdin came around to sniff and wag their tails and fawn over the “new puppy!!”

Chara would stand in the hall, back pressed against the wall, listening but not looking. Finally, after a month, their curiosity won out over their apprehension.

Little Thing was sleeping through the night at last. The house was quiet, Chara’s only companion the occasional creak of floorboards. Moonlight streamed through the hallway window, casting four white squares onto the darkness.

Through the nursery door. Careful not to step on the squeaky toys that Sans never bothered to pick up and Mom was too tired to try. Up to the crib. Little Thing shifted. He wore a onesie with cartoon dogs printed all over, no doubt one of the gifts from Dogamy and Dogaressa. He was sucking on his thumb and was the picture of peace.

“Asriel,” Chara whispered. “I...wonder…” They placed both hands on the rail and leaned forward and instantly froze at a chilling presence.

They looked back. The door was closed, and they hadn’t heard anything, but there was Sans leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets, eyes dark.

He walked forward and joined Chara at the crib. They thought,  _ Maybe I should get outta here, _ but didn’t move.

“I haven’t felt this way since Papyrus was born.” Sans’s voice was barely a whisper, barely audible. “Maybe you can’t understand. Maybe you just don’t care. But this is  _ my son _ .” He turned his empty sockets on them. His grin sent shivers down their back. Crawling. “Before he’s your brother, he’s my son. Okay? Don’t touch him. I don’t care if you’re Toriel’s kid…”

His left eye flashed blue, casting ghostly light on his face. “You’ll die.”

Chara frowned. “I’ll reset.”

Sans laughed. “If this is all destined to happen anyway, then he’ll still be born. Right?”

“Not if I kill you or Mom.”

“Somehow I don’t think you’d do that…” Sans leaned closer. “Because, despite how you feel or  _ think _ you feel, you want Torians around. Even if it’s for a bad reason.”

Chara balled their fists. He wasn’t wrong.

“And for him to be around, you gotta leave not just me and Toriel alive, but you’d have to make sure  _ all _ of this happens.” Sans gestured around the room.

“...You’re being unfair. How do you know I wanted to hurt him in the first place?”

“Call it paternal instinct.” Sans shrugged. His eyes suddenly went back to normal. “I can sense when dis- _ dad- _ sters are about to happen.” He waved them off with a hand. “It’s getting late. You better go back to bed.”

Chara releneted and left the room.

It proved to be the only chance they had at ever being alone with Little Thing. Sans started sleeping in the nursery with the excuse of “I just don’t like leavin’ him alone all night, y’know?”

* * *

More time passed. Little Thing started sitting up and crawling and making all sorts of odd noises in a feeble attempt to imitate language. As Chara suspected, the fuzz became fur and after ten months, he looked like a true cross between his parents.

The chew toys proved to be useful for something. Since he was growing fangs, he needed something more resistant than regular teething rings, and he suddenly seemed to be growing them all at once.

Chara lay on their stomach, crayon in hand and paper on the floor before them. Little Thing was a few feet away, cooing and slobbering over his favorite green bone. Sans was, as always, close by.

Little Thing went quiet and Chara looked up to see him crawling over to their spot. He sat in front of their face and waved his hands around.

“What?” they asked.

“Aah,” Torians answered.

“What do you want?”

Little Thing’s eyes drifted down to the paper and the crayon. He stuck a hand out and tried to grab it. Chara jerked away.

“No! It’s mine!”

He started whining. Sans watched carefully. There hadn’t been any incidents since that night so many months ago, but he still didn’t trust Chara.

“Ugh, fine. I was done with the brown anyway.” They handed it over and Little Thing immediately stuck it in his mouth. “No, dummy! You color with it. Like this.” They picked out another crayon and drew a line on their paper while their brother watched with intense interest.

He waved the crayon around in the air. “Buh!”

Chara took his hand and guided it to the paper. Pressed gently and dragged down to make a line. Torians giggled.

They gave him a piece of paper to play with. He forgot about the crayon after a few minutes and wandered back to his bone, leaving Chara alone with their project. They had to figure out what to do with the random line now.

“What’cha drawin’, kid?” Sans asked.

They raised their arms protectively and glared. “Nothing right now.”

“Okay, whatever.” He went back to watching Torians, his  _ actual _ child.

After a few minutes, they put down the crayon and looked at their finished work triumphantly. They stood, beamed at it, gave Sans a look, and then walked over to plop down next to Little Thing.

“Look,” they commanded.

“Babpt.” Little Thing looked over and they drew back a bit at the gross amount of drool leaking out around his chew toy.

“This is me and this is you.” Chara pointed to each. They were no artist, each figure little more than some crude circles and lines with uneven colors, but he was fascinated nonetheless.

He made an awed little “aah” sound and touched the paper. Marveled at the sensation of the crayon. Tried to grab the tinier version of himself.

“Huh. That’s actually sorta sweet, kid,” Sans said. Chara clutched the paper to their chest. “Didn’t know you had it in ya.”

They smirked. “What, artistic talent?”

Sans tilted his head. “Yea.”

Mom liked it so much she procured a frame for the drawing. It went on the nursery wall. Chara thought of Asriel every time they saw it, but…

  
  


“You’re fine with this too, aren’t you? ...Asriel.”

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: i don't actually ship Soriel which is probably how i ended up writing a fic about their child without it being even really shippy?? sometimes i impress myself.
> 
> EDIT: OH YEAH A NOTE ON THE NAME. i saw someone with the headcanon once that Gaster is a skeleton/ghost hybrid b/c Wingdings + Gaster sounds kind of ghostly so i went w/ that being a traditional skeleton thing that skeletons do b/c i couldn't decide between a portmanteau and a font myself lol...


End file.
